Little Bit of Everything PostDisaster Fic
by Fidget
Summary: And epoch in Dot's life passes, and Bob is...Bob.
1. The End

**A/N:** This has no plot. At first, I thought it did, because it made sense to me and was fun to write, but it doesn't. I tried to make it sound as if it had a plot, but I don't believe it's any use. I'm posting it anyway, thought, because I rather like it despite it's lack of substance.   
  
  
**Disclaimer:** I still don't own any of the characters, places, or nifty gadgets mentioned herein. If I ever do gain control of Mainframe Entertainment, who _does_ own them, I'll certainly let you know. In the mean time, I intend no copyright infringement.   
  
  
**Rating:** G 

* * *

Bob rushed determinedly out through the portal, looking defiant and ready to face the virus he was tracking. When nothing came immediately to view to be defiant for but a few tears, he defiantly mended them with a command to his newly-acquired keytool.

As he finished mending the first one, a movement to his right caught his eye. He glanced over, and was taken off guard by a young woman in a short, purple dress (Bob's hormones carefully noted the length of the exposed legs, the slim waist and hips, and several things about the area immediately above that). She was walking up to him, taking off the tiny, useless glasses to get a clear look at him. She looked confused and upset.

Bob realized his mouth was open, and felt the best course of action would be to say something dashing or heroic to avoid looking too stupid. "I'm a cade-I mean...I'm a Guardian. I...come from the Net."

_Way to go, Casanova,_ he berated himself, but the girl had overlooked his faltering introduction in light of a larger concept.

"The Net?" she asked, and Bob nodded brightly.

"Yes, from another system. A Super Computer." he added proudly, hoping once again to impress her with his importance. But she didn't answer. Suddenly Bob realized the situation and how focusing on himself was probably a bad tactic. He changed his angle. "I'm...so terribly sorry..."

She narrowed her eyes in understanding. "_You_ caused this?" she demanded, gesturing at the chaos around them. Horrified, Bob shook his head.

"No!"

The girl ran forward in a burst of emotions. "_You did!_ This is _your fault!_" she accused him, punctuating her words with weak pummeling to his chest. He looked down in helpless confusion as she left of beating against his chest and merely cried against him.

"No! I...I came to help! Please, I...I just wanna help," he stuttered as she wept.

He heard the distinctive sound of an opening portal behind him, and the Prime Guardian's voice called out to him, "Bob? Are you all right?"

Bob nodded, then realized how ridiculous he must look to Turbo and the other two Guardians, watching as the girl alternately pelted and sobbed against him. He pushed her away from himself by her upper arms and looked at her seriously. "Hey, pull yourself together for me, okay?" She nodded, wiping the tears off her face carefully so as not to smudge purple and black makeup all over her face.

  
  


Turning around, Dot noticed Enzo, looking terrified at her behavior. He cowered amidst the frenzy and the sirens, looking even smaller than usual. Quickly, she ran to him and knelt down, hugging him against her. He was quaking with suppressed sobs...Dot cursed herself. He probably thought he had to be brave for her, now she'd broken down. Putting on a mask of less pain than she really felt, she looked him in the eyes. "Enzo, it'll all be okay. I know things are hectic, but we'll be fine..." Her words sounded hollow to her, but the little boy found comfort in them. He nodded and bit his lip, and Dot stood up again, keeping his hand in hers.

As she surveyed the scene once again, Dot's eye was caught by a piece of rubble being moved past them, behind Enzo's back. A small piece of her father's Gateway command, charred and sent to splinters...

Dot felt her last bit of resolve leave her.

  
  


Bob was furious. How could Turbo treat him like this? "Don't worry, Bob, we'll clean things up here. You go and keep the locals calm." Hah! As if Bob wasn't capable of mending a few tears or tracking a little virus! He turned away from the other Guardians, steaming, and spotted the girl again. She looked as if she was having some trouble standing, and for the first time Bob noticed she held a little boy's hand in hers. He was confused by the child. She looked very young, too young to have a kid who looked to be about 0.5, but then...He shook his head. If he had to help out with the locals, he might as well start with this one.

She glanced up as he neared her, and Bob realized he didn't know what he should say to comfort or calm her. "Uh...Are you going to be all right?" he asked. It was a lame thing to ask. She would most likely be okay, eventually, and chances where she was far from okay at the moment.

"I just want to go home." she confessed, closing her eyes and lowering her head, looking so helpless and forlorn that the cade-I mean-Guardian suddenly felt quite sorry for her that he was willing to go to a great length to make her happier.

"Hey," he began uncertainly. "You want me to escort you home or something? I mean...to make sure you make it okay...Uh..." He continued to stutter about victims of shock for a few moments before noticing she was nodding. Overjoyed, he took a step towards his...

He had no way to transport her home. Only a zipboard. _Sometimes, Bob, you even manage to amaze yourself with your stupidity_...

He pulled a lock of hair nervously. "Um...I just realized...I don't actually have a car."

The girl silently leaned over and reached into the top of her boot. She pulled out a slender key and handed it to him. "Mine's the purple dune-buggy with the green splashes."

Bob looked over his shoulder and spotted the described car. He flashed her a grin. "Thanks."

She shrugged. "I don't trust myself to drive just now, anyway."

They walked over to the car, and Bob slid into the driver's seat. The owner of the vehicle climbed into the front passenger and held out her arms for the boy, but he paused.

"But, sis...Why can't we stay here and wait for-?"

She cut him off. "We need to go home. We're in everybody's way."

Bob disregarded the sentence as none of his business, but did take note of the boy's calling her 'sis' and not 'mom'. He waited for the boy to crawl into her lap and settle in, then started the car up.

"Where's your house?" he asked, happy to have thought of the question before starting forward this time. When she didn't answer, he glanced over and saw the crushed look on her face.

"I don't think we have one anymore." she stated sadly. The little boy whimpered. Bob felt that intense desire to help welling up again.

"I'll get you a hotel room," he offered, spinning the car around and heading for what looked like a functioning part of the system. "You two will need somewhere to stay for the night."

She mumbled a thank-you, then there was silence. Bob felt he should say something to break the tension. Or keep her mind off the tragedy. Yeah, that was definitely it. Keep her from stewing too much.

"What happened?" he asked, then immediately kicked himself mentally. Way to keep her mind off the subject. 

She sighed deeply. "I don't know, exactly. Dr. Welman Matrix was doing an experiment to prove that...that people like _you_ exist," She swallowed and blinked furiously, determined not to lose it in front of her brother again. "I guess something went wrong."

Bob nodded, then looked back at her with surprise. "Prove I exist? What do you mean?"

She looked back at him. "Well, we weren't even sure that other systems existed. That there were other sprites out there."

Bob gawked at her. "You'd never seen another system? I mean, _User_...!" He stopped as he noticed her angry glare.

"Well, I'm _sorry_ we aren't as highly advanced as your...your _Super_ Computer! I guess we don't have all your nifty _gadgets_ that do...User-knows-what! But I don't really feel like fighting you about it now, because _I've_ just lost a substantial portion of my life!"

Bob grimaced. "Sorry. I didn't mean to sound like that." He noticed a small hotel below them and pulled the car down into their parking lot. "Here. Good to get here before everyone else, I guess all the rooms'll be full in a while."

The girl and her brother climbed out of the car, and he handed her back the little key. As she turned away, he felt a rising panic, a sense of now-or-never, and said suddenly, "Hey!"

She turned back, looking exhausted. "What's your name?" he asked quickly. She fixed him with an odd expression, but said,

"Dot Matrix."

His mouth formed a silent, 'Ah,' but his gaze fell. "I'm...Bob. A Guardian."

"Yes, you said that."

"Oh."

It was not until he had escaped to the safety of the air on his zipboard that Bob gave her name some thought. Matrix...Hadn't she said it was a Dr. Matrix who had...? Was she married? No, she was young, more likely it was-

He heard a tiny, melancholy voice below him say, "I want Dad, sis."

Maybe he would...check up on them in the morning. Just to make sure they were okay, and she hadn't done anything too desperate...That's what he had been assigned to, wasn't it?

He would just check in with her later.


	2. The Beginning

Dot kissed Enzo's forehead softly, glad that the boy had finally fallen asleep. With a sigh, she realized she'd be getting no sleep tonight, and decided to set about making herself more comfortable at least.

She walked into the tiny bathroom. Forest-green Formica counters contrasted with linoleum and fiberglass that may or may not have been beige originally. Dot unlatched her earrings, her necklaces, and bracelets, and set them in a pile on the counter beneath the mirror. She pulled the rubber band and bobby pins out of her hair and tossed them in the general direction of the pile of accessories, then picked up the neatly-folded forest-green washcloth from the side of the sink and washed her face with warm water.

The cloth came away caked with dark purple, and Dot looked at herself in the mirror. Her long eyelashes where clumped together by moisture, and though she didn't think herself particularly pretty without her masses of eyeshadow and lipstick, she decided she looked cleaner and less teenaged. A sudden urge came over her, and she peeled the tight purple dress off and climbed into the shower.

The warm water rushing over her shoulders was less comfort to her than she might have hoped, and she felt a pang of disappointment. She realized she had no shampoo, and so rubbed the tiny soap between her hands to build up a lather and began the time-consuming task of washing all the dye from her hair.

Dot set about this task with a single-minded determination that she had been capable of from very young. She didn't try to keep track of the amount of time the blues and pinks swirled around her feet and down the drain. She only stopped when at last the swirls did, and turned off the faucet.

As the outside source of water was cut, she realized she had been crying. She wiped her face with a swift gesture, not giving herself time to fall deeper into grief, and dried herself with the forest-green (a slightly different shade than the counters and shower curtain) motel-provided towel.

She stepped on to the fluffy bathmat, wrapping the towel around herself, and looked at her reflection seriously. Her hair hung down just past her chin, various bits of it bleached to an unnatural yellowish blonde. Dot grabbed for her belt and maximized the little purse she kept on it, opened it, and found what she was looking for.

Scissors in hand, she leaned closer to the mirror. She pulled out the front of her hair in one hand, glad she hadn't gone and gotten it re-bleached to the roots yesterday as she had intended, and cut the yellow part off.

She leaned back and looked at herself again, then grabbed another lock of hair and cut it to the same length. And again. And again...

Dot dropped the scissors with a twanging clatter. She leaned back against the wall, not wanting to see her short hair in the mirror, not wanting to see herself at all. Instead, she grabbed her icon off the counter and began to examine various clothes she had stored in it. She decided on a simple, peach-colored jumpsuit. She had never worn it much before, thinking it a little dull, but it seemed appropriate. She booted into it quietly, looked at herself once, and exited the bathroom.

She was Dot Matrix. She had two lives to rebuild. She had to get to work.

  
  


Bob paused before knocking on room 452's door. He glanced over himself quickly, tugging at his suit in fear of wrinkles, breathed into his cupped hand and sniffed, and pulled his hair into a position that felt the way he wanted it to.

He knocked.

The woman who answered the door was not the girl he had seen yesterday. She looked older, more serious. Her hair was up in a conservative do, her clothing was practical.

Bob stared at her openly before realizing what he was doing. It _was_ the same girl, her eyes where the same beautiful, intelligent stars of violet as he remembered. He cleared his throat.

"Uh...hi." He mumbled. Dot looked at him dully.

"Hello." She replied, waiting for him to elaborate. He stared at her boots, short heels with turned-down cuffs.

"I was...I was wondering, uh...I'm just checking up on you." He said, examining the ground for flaws. Dot blinked.

"Oh." She shrugged flipantly. "Well, here I am." The Guardian glanced up.

"Yeah. Here you are." He stared again, but quickly regained his composure if not his dignity. He cleared his throat again. "I just needed to make sure you were okay, and nothing drastic happened...You know. Because people do desperate things after this kind of thing."

Her face tightened slightly. "What did you plan on doing if I had hung myself by my belt from the curtain rod in the bathroom?"

Bob stared at her, surprised. "Um, well, I was hoping you hadn't yet."

Dot began to breathe harder. "And what kind of a thing would that be to do, anyways, deleting myself and leaving my little brother behind? What if he came into the bathroom and saw me hanging there? He'd be scarred for life!"

Bob nodded wordlessly, a bit confused. Dot seemed to refocus on him.

"Thank you for checking up." She said curtly, and began to slam the door. 

Before she could, a vidwindow popped up in front of her, a face that had been familiar to her all her life looking out. She managed a smile for the old sprite. "Hi, Phong."

He nodded in greeting. "Hello, my child. I am calling to...check up on you and your brother."

Bob gave a very small amused snort.

"Thanks, Phong. I think we're doing as okay as...We're fine." She tried to tuck her hair behind her ear to rediscover that it was short and she couldn't. She wondered what Phong thought of her change in appearance, and why he had decided not to say anything. Maybe he thought she was already on edge.

Maybe she was.

She realized Bob was still standing in front of her and turned the vidwindow to face him. "Phong, this is Bob. He's a...Guardian. He comes from the _Net_." She smiled, small, but the first real smile she had given in a second. She stopped it quickly. _Not even an entire second since your father...and you're smiling..._

Bob had switched on his official air for Phong and was stating where, precisely, he had come from, as if it made any impression on Phong at all. The old sprite nodded.

"Yes, I have spoken with your superiors. They have explained everything in detail."

Bob could be seen to frown slightly at 'superiors'.

Phong continued. "Welcome, young Guardian. But I have a mission for you."

Bob straightened again. "Yes?"

"There are two virii somewhere in Mainframe or the remaining sector of the Twin City. I need a description of their abilities and whereabouts, if at all possible."

Bob nodded crisply, but a grin had broken out on his face. "I'll get on it immediately, sir."

"Thank you, young sprite." Phong turned to face Dot again. "And Dot, if you or your brother should need anything, do not hesitate to ask."

Dot nodded wordlessly, and the vidwindow closed. She looked at Bob, and he saluted her good-naturedly.

"Well, you heard the man. I'm off." He turned on his heel.

"Wait!"

Bob paused and looked over his shoulder. She ran inside the room again, and one could hear her grabbing things in a great hurry. A small voice from inside mumbled sleepily.

"Dot? Where're you going?"

"I'll be back soon, just stay inside. Don't answer the door for anyone, I'll have the key, okay? Don't be frightened." She kissed his forehead.

Bob watched her slide out the door, close it and lock it. He cocked an eyebrow, confused. "Where _are_ you going in such a hurry?"

"With you." She answered, fiddling with the lock. Bob shook his head.

"No, no, no. This could be dangerous. I'm trained for it! But I don't want you to get hurt."

She turned around and glared at him, eyes flashing. He frowned. "But..."

She threw down her zipboard and stepped on, then tossed one in front of him. "Come on, Phong needs those reports."

Bob blinked, stepped on to the zipboard, and followed her.


End file.
